


Giving Me a Chance

by floodplain



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Children, F/M, Gen, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:16:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floodplain/pseuds/floodplain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by http://theavengersheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/23971598730/submission-208 because it was a mental image I couldn't get out of my head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giving Me a Chance

"Hey there, mini-me." Tony leaned over the crib's edge with a nervous smile that no one else was awake to see. His hands twitched and he pressed them against his chest to stop them. "Let's ditch this joint."

"Sir, I must protest." Tony jumped and cursed under his breath, pulling his hands away from the sleeping bundle of joy like a child caught trying to reach into the cookie jar. "The child needs his sleep." 

"When you make a baby you can tell me how to raise it, JARVIS." He bounced on the balls of his feet and took a moment to marvel at that. A child. Of his.

"Respectfully, Miss Potts did most of the work." Tony shrugged and bent over the crib again to watch the boy's chest rise and fall. A minute passed before he worked up the courage to reach for his son again, succeeding at this attempt and cradling the small thing (he had trouble bringing himself to think of it as a _baby_ ) with a soft sigh. 

"Don't listen to him, her name is Mrs. Stark. Mrs. Virginia Stark. He's jealous of how lucky your fa-. Shit. I'm actually your father!" The exclamation was louder than he intended, and he clutched Phillip close to his chest as he whirled towards the still-open door that lead to the master bedroom where Pepper had collapsed after the baby's last feeding. She didn't stir as he carefully shut the door.

Tony planted himself in the luxurious blue leather rocker that he somehow hadn't noticed before and shifted Phillip to lay the baby across his lap and simply stared at the child by the light of his arc reactor.

"You look a hell of a lot like your mother, Phil. I wonder if you'll tan..." He laughed, brushing his fingertips across the infant's cheeks with a wondering expression.

"You got my hair, so maybe you will. I do, most of the time. When I go outside, you know. Maybe I should make a transparent version of the suit. That'd tan me up. It would drive Pepper crazy too." Tony laughed quietly.

"I do that enough. Don't tell her I thought about a transparent suit. She can run SI and raise you without me, I don't need to give her any more excuses to kill me. She promised to sixteen times during labor. One point two-three times an hour. You took your time coming, Phillip." The baby burbled happily and closed his eyes.

"You made me sit in a hospital for thirteen hours. I hate hospitals. So, you're not getting an allowance for _years_ , you hear? I didn't step into the hospital after my parents died. Or anytime after that, not even after Afghanistan..." 

Tony fell silent, spreading the fingers of his right hand out across Phillip's chest.

"I guess I'll start at the beginning. My name is Anthony Edward Stark. I'm your father. Is it too early to say that? You're not even 48 hours old. Uh. Your grandparents were Howard and Maria Stark. They were..." His face twitched and he ran his left hand through his hair with a sigh. 

"Were good people. There was a car accident, when I was twenty-one. They died. I don't want you to get that call. That says your parents are dead and so...I'm gonna try to keep that from happening to you." Tony took a deep breath, suddenly aware of the unshed tears in his eyes.

"Howard started Stark Industries, before I was born. We built weapons, designed aircraft...anything a defense contractor would. You'll learn about that eventually. Probably in school. After they died, for a few years there was a guy named Obadiah Stane who...hell. He helped, at first, but he fucked everything up. That's how I ended up with this." Tony lifted his right hand from Phillip's chest and tapped the faint glow of the arc reactor.

"I got kidnapped in Afghanistan. I never really talked to anyone about some of it. Not even your mom...She worked for me back when it happened. I know, it's weird, she wasn't always the CEO! Shocking. She was my personal assistant, and she was just as amazing back then as she is now." He trailed off, tucking his left hand under Phillip's head with a sad smile.

"I, uh, got out with some help. His name was Yinsen. He gave me a second chance at everything. And for a while I still fucked around. I stopped wars but I almost died, lots of times really, and I put Pepper through hell. Pepper's your mom, by the way. It's a nickname. I guess no one at the hospital was calling her that, and I had a mission a few minutes after you got home, so...you haven't heard it." 

"So. The missions. You really lucked out, Phil. Your mom is one of the most powerful people in the world, and so is your dad. Your dad's still me, just covering that again. I'm Iron Man. Bad-ass bringer of peace, yadda-yadda, that's me. I don't do it alone any more though, okay? Don't worry about that, 'cause I have people to watch my back now. People that aren't Pepper or Rhodey or Happy, I mean, and even with them there are fights. It's a team. I know you just know me now, after a _shitload_ of change, so you won't get what a huge deal this is, but I'm on a _team_. I mean, I usually don't play well with others...

"We got a soldier that was asleep for 70 years and is really just _perfection_ in a human body even if he's boring, two assassins – one who uses an actual bow and that's just as hard to believe as the super-soldier, I know, but he rocks it, and then there's the near-immortal from another world that can control lightning, the scientist who had something go wrong and developed an angry, angry second personality, and me. We're the Avengers. I guess we kinda work for SHIELD. Don't tell them I said that. I think prefer to think of us as independent.

"Wait, I gotta go back. Uh. After I got back from Afghanistan, before I...uncovered Stane, a boring government agent guy showed up wanting to "debrief" me and all that shit. It sounded boring. We never got around to it. His name was Coulson. Agent Phillip Coulson. Phillip like you, because you're named after him. Coulson helped us cover Stane's death and he dealt with me during one of those times when I was dying, after I signed SI over to Pep. Coulson was a good friend of Pepper. They got along. Somehow. I'm kind of glad I didn't get to see that, because I'm sure it would have been fucking terrifying." Tony laughed quietly.

"He was still working with SHIELD when they finally brought all of us together. It took a while. We didn't get along. And that's the kinda understatement your mom would make. Some shit went down and..." Tony took a shaky breath and stood to begin pacing the room. He adjusted Phillip against his shoulder, suddenly aware of that fact that he had actually just cried all over his newborn son. 

"Okay. He was an idiot and he confronted the bad guy on his own, and he got himself stabbed just as I was finally warming up to him. That got us working together, I guess. Someone we knew died and more people were going to die if we didn't get our shit together...So we did it. And we saved the planet." 

"Somewhere along the line a...Well, I don't want to use the word mistake because you aren't a mistake, you're perfect and you were a wonderful surprise, but something happened and you came along." Tony smiled broadly, pausing near the door to open it a sliver and peek into the bedroom to check on Pepper.

"Your mom, she came back from DC with chili dogs and sat me down. I gotta admit for a long time I was convinced she was leaving me. She kept pacing and she wouldn't eat. I guess when you're pregnant chili dogs don't seem that tasty? That's gotta suck. She told me you were on the way, and then she proposed." He remembered to shut the door at that point, when Pepper suddenly rolled over and stole his unused pillow with a sleepy sigh.

"...And you gotta admit, that's a lot to drop on a guy when you've just brought him chili dogs and he just wanted to eat them. I said yes eventually and got her a ring even though she had her father's ring for me and then there was a wedding, which I guess you don't want to hear about, and then you got here.

"You're all caught up now, okay? We'll...make this a tradition. Maybe I should tape 'em or something. I dunno. I'll probably do that. It'll be nice for you to have," He trailed off and brushed the infant's hair flat with a soft smile. "To have whenever.

"Pepper's gonna kill me if I don't put you back down and get sleep myself, I think. So we're gonna do that and we'll see each other again in a few hours." Tony kissed Phillip's forehead gently, as if the boy were a delicate circuit that might fail if jostled too hard, before settling him down in the crib and carefully tucking him in.

"Good night, Phillip Howard Stark. I love you." 

He left the nursery door cracked so they could hear if Phillip did need them as he crawled in beside Pepper. She could keep his pillow, he decided. She deserved it.


End file.
